Buenos Aires and Colonia del Sacramento

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number two - im in bloggo-mania now, so let's continue with my next stop...im only a mere 2 weeks behind myself so hopefully by the end of this week i will have caught up...


so i arrived in buenos aires on monday 5th feb - went straight via their subte (first underground train in south america i believe - very hot down there and parts are made of wood..) to my hostel in the microcentro...right in the middle of town it was a nice, old 5 storey building (with a lift - thank god for the lift) with a cool rooftop terrace (well actually it was really, really hot up there). although i was used to the tropical heat of iguazu experiencing it in a big city is something different...especially whilst walking round town with your spanish teacher who's keen to talk and make you talk (badly)!


my first language lesson started the next day, the idea of it being to actually walk round the city (more often to the nearest bar) instead of sitting all day in a classroom. i think my spanish improved slightly, however due to the utter laziness in terms of homework i didn't really advance a lot... blame it on the heat me thinks!


on the first day we (ie emily and me - 3 american guys - luckily - dropped out) met our teacher vicky in palermo, a really nice quarter with loads of old-style houses, painted street walls and plenty of hidden bars and restaurants. there are many antique-shops too (which is great if you can actually buy stuff and not think about how much it'll cost to send it home)...

despite the scorching conditions i enjoyed our city centre walk the next day- along the broad Parisian-style avenues (that's where the riots of 2001 over the hyperinflation broke out) , passing the Casa Rosada (and its famous Evita balcony) and the cathedral...then we headed straight to a parilla - one of their famous steakhouses (i didn't eat any - yet!). completely empty at 7pm. you'd have to wait a good few hours more before seeing anyone - dinnertime for argentinians starts at 10pm! as a rule (noisily confirmed by argentinian and brazilian girls in my hostel) people go for dinner at 10pm, come home around midnight, get ready and go out about 3-4am. two (german) guys told me that they couldn't get into a club once at 3.30am - too early! god, i know back home in hamburg you don't leave the house before 11pm or so but this is something completely different! so when everyone went out for food, i went straight to bed - sightseeing is very tiring indeed...or maybe im just getting old 😉...


one night, however, we all went to one of the best parillas in town and - behold, behold - indeed i managed to gulp down half a portion of a steak (the other half being eaten by emily who beat my record of 12 meat-free years by 3!)!! ive heard of other long-term veggies being converted by the taste of argentinian meat but not me...it was ok, and i might try another BBQ (when im up in the northwest around Salta) but that's about it...I HAVE NOT TURNED (only backtracked slightly)!


the last 3 days in BA were spent in palermo (leafy suburb with plenty of cool bars and shops - once again i left empty-handed) and la boca - THE famous quarter with all the colourful houses (see photos). it would have been really charming if it wouldn't have felt overwhelmingly touristy...and you were warned not to leave the streets (or marked paths, rather) and wander off too far on your own - too dangerous as la boca is quite a poor district with those 2 or 3 streets full of rich tourists...a bit weird...


for the last day emily and me decided to take the ferry (my roughest ferry ride (yet)) over to uruguay, to colonia del sacramento. a very lovely late 17th century colonial town indeed - an old settler's outpost, with bits of the wall still visible, cobbled streets (the real, antique cobble!) lined by little colourful stone houses, now turned into museums and galleries. it was such a lovely day out there, great getting out of noisy, polluted BA to this tranquil oasis. the weather was very overcast, but this didn't matter as it wasn't cold at all and it was good to escape the city heat...they also had a lighthouse (ONLY 150 years old) where we stayed on for about an hour...by the time we were back on the ferry my cold that had been around the last day got worse, got a bit of temperature and felt quite ill...was a bit worried that i couldn't get on my bus to puerto madryn the next day but it was ok in the end...hmmm, i normally never recover that quickly when it's time to go back into work...


Photos:
Buenos Aires


and


Colonia del Sacramento

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